Recently this past month I had the epic opportunity to compete on Sydney Harbor in Australia, for the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s Musto International Youth Match Racing Championship. This event otherwise know as “The Musto” is a world renound youth match race that draws the best under 23 competitors from around the world. Better yet this regatta was designated a World Sailing grade 1 regatta, which is the highest ranking they can give to a match race regatta for its intense competition, outstanding umpires, prize money, and global diversity. It was a great event.

Thank you so much for your support of my travels to the CJ Buckley Regatta this year. Being able to attend this event was an extremely valuable experience. With such a high level of competition and so many races, it was the perfect event to gain a lot of experience in team racing. The CJ Buckley is an open team racing regatta, with 24 teams, sailed in a Swiss League format meaning teams of the same records race each other. This makes every race super important, and challenging. It was downright fun sailing.

Thank you so much for the grant that allowed me to travel to Buzzards Bay this summer. Along the way I encountered some unexpected surprises. Two days before the event my crew, Wynslow, raced into her house, tripped and broke her wrist. After going through my contacts, I was able to find a friend to crew last minute. Michael Fineman, one of my good friends, was able to crew for me.  We had one practice day before the regatta. On the first day of the regatta we placed 4th and 8th out of the 80 boats in our flight. Unfortunately, some of the boats did not round a certain mark so the PRO decided to throw out both races on the first day. The next day Michael and I were consistently top 6 in our flight, moving us into 12th place overall. After racing that day, we moved up, as other boat’s score changed and were in 9th place. Thankfully we did not have a throw out. The last day was very light and the race committee delayed racing for a few hours. We were only able to race two races that day. Which was perfect for us as we had a good first race and a not so good second race. After all the races and scores were finalized, we managed to stay in 9th place overall out of 150 boats. Thank you again for the grant that allowed me to travel to the Buzzards Bay Regatta. I had a great time and was able to see many of my East Coast sailing friends, and race against my West Coast friends Nathan Sih and Morgan Pinckney.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to sail in the C420 North American Championship.  This was my first C420 regatta with my skipper and we both learned a lot.  The venue allowed us to see wind that we had not seen before.  The wind was not constant.  It was puffy and there were a lot of shifts.  Some of the issues we encountered while sailing was the fact, we kept flipping the boat due to high wind or waves hitting the boat which made me slip and fall into the water.  I became much better at changing my pins out on the water, even in 22 knots of wind.  My favorite part of this regatta was being with my family.  My dad took my sister and I two days early to practice.  The extra practice helped a lot.  My coach (Will Brown) was also my coach back east for the C420 New England regatta and he really helped me with how to use my controls correctly and how to be stable downwind.  Overall it was a great experience for me and I would love to come back again. 

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to sail in the 2019 C420 New England Championship.  The first day of racing was difficult as I had just taken a red eye from San Diego and got to the venue around 9am.  I had been racing in the Rose Cup in San Diego in J22s and the redeye was the only flight I could take which allowed me to race on Sunday in the Rose Cup and race on Monday in the C420 New England Championship.  The conditions for the event were light and shifty.  Day two was much better for us.  Our scores were all top 10 finishes.  There were 70 boats and in this regatta all boats started on the same line.  This made starting very challenging.  We received an OCS on the last race which was unfortunate as we would have had another top 10 finish.  Without the OCS we would have placed 10th overall.  The OCS set us back a couple places.  Overall this was a fun regatta.  Thank you again for the grant that allowed me to participate in this regatta.  It is always fun getting to travel back east.

This past July, Jeffrey Petersen and I competed at the 2019 c420 North American Championship at St. Francis Yacht Club. Although it was our first large scale c420 event together, because we decided to sail it a few months earlier and had only practiced a few times before, Jeffrey and I were relatively confident going into the event. I would personally like to thank Tom Ehman for graciously hosting us for the week, and our coaches Will Brown and Clinton Hayes. Jeffrey and I sailed well during the four-day event, as one of the few teams who were able to keep our boat up-right in the consistent 20+ kt wind, large swell, and ripping current. We had consistent top-ten finishes, however due to a BFD in the last race finished 12th out of the 95 boat fleet. Thank you, Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation, for your generous support!